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Feb 28, 2011

BlackBerry PlayBook Android app support mentioned during demo at MWC, old BlackBerrys show up in ShopSavvy's Android logs

As far-fetched as it may seem,rumorsthat RIM is working on some sort of Android app support for its QNX-basedPlayBooktablet have persisted in various forms for months now -- and they've turned up once again in a video posted by development community MobileMonday's Rio chapter taken atMWCearlier this month, where a RIM rep seemingly says "we will also support Android apps" after talking about Java-based offerings. Of course, this could've been staged by some rabble rousers or a rep could've simply been echoing back the rumors he's seen on the interwebs -- but regardless, it adds fuel to the fire. Follow the break to see the video of that.But it gets weirder. ShopSavvy -- which makes versions of its app for iOS and Android -- has started turning up a couple of older BlackBerry devices in its Android build's usage statistics onFlurry: the Curve 8300 and 8520, to be specific, along with an 8600 model that doesn't exist (at least, not yet). The 8300, in particular, is pretty ancient at this point and we're having a hard time wrapping our brain around RIM's game plan in portingDalvik(or a Dalvik-like) VM and associated libraries over to it; if anything, Flurry could be confused. Then again, a next-generation full-touch BlackBerry that just happens to run a full suite of Android apps in a sandbox could be a pretty compelling product, indeed.[Technorati Tags: BlackBerry, PlayBook, ShopSavvy, Android]